Hands on with the new Fitbit One and its dubious upgrades (Updated)

Bluetooth 4.0 is great, but the user experience suffers in other ways.

In September, Fitbit announced it was making a fairly major update to its popular fitness tracker—now called the Fitbit One. The updated product didn't get too many functionality updates, but it did get a major one: the ability to sync with certain smartphones over Bluetooth 4.0. The Fitbit One also received a physical makeover with a sleeker design, as well as the ability to wake you up slowly in the morning, but the main selling point for many new (and existing) Fitbit owners was its new syncing ability.

The device is already on some Best Buy store shelves, but an official ship date is expected to come down the line next week. In the meantime, we've been using a Fitbit One here at Ars since the beginning of November—there are numerous upsides to the new device, but just as many downsides. Especially if you're an existing Fitbit owner wondering if you should upgrade, you'll want to read on in order to decide whether the tradeoffs are worth it.

The Pros

There are many things to like about the Fitbit One, not the least of which is Bluetooth 4.0 support. Fitbit owners have long wanted a way to sync their devices directly with smartphones, so the ability to do this now with iOS devices (Android devices coming "soon") is a hugely welcome addition. No longer are users stuck syncing with their computers at home or at the office, which often results in long periods of time without a sync at all if your dock is in one place or the other. Most of us have our smartphones on us at all times, so your Fitbit data is now updated much more often—practically in realtime—if you are using this feature in the Fitbit One.

The physical design is worth praising as well. The previous Fitbit was no ugly duckling, but the Fitbit One is smoother—both literally and figuratively. It feels nice to hold and is more modern-looking overall. The build quality also seems to be improved—we had some issues with our original Fitbits beginning to crack at the side seams, but the Fitbit One comes off as more solid and resistant to everyday wear and tear.

Part of the reason for this apparent improvement in build quality is the fact that Fitbit has separated out the clip and casing from the rest of the device. The built-in clip on the old Fitbit was convenient for attaching it to your pocket, belt, bra, or other clothing item easily, but it made the entire device subject to damage when the clip got caught. (One Ars staffer's Fitbit was ripped in half when the clip got caught on a seatbelt while he was exiting the car.)

With the Fitbit One, the device itself no longer has a clip—instead, you slide it into a rubberized casing that has a metal clip built in. The benefits to this are twofold: the Fitbit itself can no longer be completely destroyed if the clip ends up getting caught or broken, and the rubberized case makes it much more difficult for the Fitbit to slide out of your clothing. In our experience, this is a common problem—and it's very annoying to almost lose a $100 device several times a week—so the rubberized casing is a welcome change.

The Cons

But like most things in life, the Fitbit One isn't perfect. No one expects it to be. But some of the problems we found when using the Fitbit One were perplexing, largely because they could have been mitigated with a little more thought to the end-user experience.

For example, the Fitbit One no longer comes with its old USB dock that was used to both sync and charge the device via your computer. Instead, it comes with two separate USB dongles to serve those purposes: one for charging, and one for syncing over Bluetooth (we'll get to the nitpick on this in a second). Now, instead of taking up just one port on your computer, the Fitbit requires two, unless you choose to charge it from the wall with a third-party USB wall charger. Was it completely impossible for Fitbit to integrate the charger and Bluetooth functionality into one USB dongle?

You might say: "But my computer has Bluetooth built-in. Can't I just get rid of the Bluetooth dongle and only take up one USB port?" The answer to that is, unfortunately, no. It appears as if the Fitbit One only wants to sync with its desktop app over its own Bluetooth dongle, and not the Bluetooth built into your computer—or at least we couldn't get it to do so on multiple machines. This means you have to either carry around the (extremely tiny) dongle between home and work, or just avoid syncing with your computer at one of those locations. But as we mentioned earlier, the Fitbit One can now sync with your iPhone or iPad over Bluetooth, so maybe this doesn't matter as much as it might otherwise.

But there are problems with that angle, too. First, there's the fact that the Fitbit One can only sync with modern iOS devices for now (the iPhone 5, fifth-gen iPod touch, and most recent iPads), so users of other platforms are left waiting. But even on iOS devices, the implementation isn't perfect. Ever since we installed iOS 6.0.1, released at the beginning of the month, the Fitbit app crashes relentlessly. A consequence of this is that the Fitbit One itself can't sync to its own app, sometimes for days at a time.

To boot, this lack of syncing seems to make the Fitbit's time drift far off course, which results in the device constantly logging data for the wrong day.

Is it really an upgrade?

We were elated when we heard the news about the Fitbit gaining Bluetooth syncing capabilities—particularly with smartphones. This is still one of the best new features, but the company clearly needs to up its game when it comes to updating its apps and making sure the device can continue to sync. Also, you don't need us to tell you that additional platform support is needed—iOS is indeed a wildly popular platform, but Android users are a pretty large group too, and they're still waiting on this feature.

The limitations when syncing to the (computer) desktop—which apparently requires the use of the easily-lost Bluetooth dongle—are obnoxious. Doubly obnoxious when you consider that you have to charge the device with a completely separate dongle. You have to have both nearby if you want to charge and sync with your computer. And if you don't—and your iOS app is always crashing—then you might actually go for days, or even weeks, without a real sync. When you do finally get to sync, it may have identified your step or floor data as being for the wrong day, and it might think today is three weeks ago.

Do those downsides outweigh the benefits that come with (limited) smartphone syncing and an improved physical design? It's honestly hard to say either way. I can't say that I, an existing (old) Fitbit owner, would spend my own money on a Fitbit One after having had all these experiences firsthand. But on the flip side, some of these issues are related to how Fitbit's own software works—whether on the desktop or on a mobile device. Software can be updated, so it's possible that these issues may not exist in six months if the company decides to improve its software implementations.

This isn't to say the software was particularly impressive with the old Fitbit either—at least on the Mac, the background processes often died and many Fitbit owners report having to reinstall it on a regular basis. It's much more reliable on Windows—one Ars staffer says he exclusively syncs his old Fitbit over a Windows install on a virtual machine on his Mac—but that's a level of effort many users won't exert. It's pretty clear that Fitbit has its stuff together when it comes to designing a friendly, easy-to-use physical product, but there are plenty of improvements to be made when it comes to how software affects the user experience.

Update: We've heard from Fitbit iOS developer Barry Burton about some of the points in this post. He says they're "working on" allowing the Fitbit One to sync directly with Macs that have Bluetooth 4.0, and the floating days problem can be attributed to a Daylight Savings Time bug. He also instructed us to delete and reinstall the Fitbit app for the crashing problems.

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

Yeah, Jacqui regularly seems to wear garish nail polish, and insists on having her fingers in her photos. It's a consistent thing and really it's something which shouldn't happen.Can't blame only her, since there's presumably an editor at Ars, but it never looks particularly professional or appropriate.

Also, rather than saying "there's a problem that it only syncs with new iOS devices", couldn't you be more general and say "it's a problem it ONLY syncs with iOS device, and even then only with new iOS devices".I would consider the fact it doesn't sync with Android at all to be a more serious issue than syncing only with a subset of iOS devices. At least it syncs with SOME.

That thumb (and nail polish color) is really distracting from the actual fitbit

Yeah, Jacqui regularly seems to wear garish nail polish, and insists on having her fingers in her photos. It's a consistent thing and really it's something which shouldn't happen.Can't blame only her, since there's presumably an editor at Ars, but it never looks particularly professional or appropriate.

This. If you're going to take a picture of something, put it down so you're not holding it in your hands.

That thumb (and nail polish color) is really distracting from the actual fitbit

Yeah, Jacqui regularly seems to wear garish nail polish, and insists on having her fingers in her photos. It's a consistent thing and really it's something which shouldn't happen.Can't blame only her, since there's presumably an editor at Ars, but it never looks particularly professional or appropriate.

This. If you're going to take a picture of something, put it down so you're not holding it in your hands.

Unless you want to show off your nails makup Or preffered OS Or fact that you are shooting picture of YOUR OWN DEVICE (which means better review, as you write from vewpoint of real user). Or that you want to show real SIZE of that device.

In fact that Bluetooth 4.0 may really mean "Bluetooth low energy" in single mode configuration. Which is only compabile with other Bluetooth 4.0 devices (but is power efficient which IS THE factor in such small devices).1`

Macs have had Bluetooth 4.0 support for a couple of generations now, IIRC, so it's quite disappointing that I'd have yet another dongle to keep track of were I to buy this. I was considering it, but I think I'll hold off for soft/firmware updates and hope things improve. Thanks for the review!

It appears as if the Fitbit One only wants to sync with its desktop app over its own Bluetooth dongle, and not the Bluetooth built into your computer—or at least we couldn't get it to do so on multiple machines.

As others have mentioned, the extra sync USB dongle is likely because Bluetooth 4.0 is still very rare on the PC side of things. More than likely, the new Fitbit device is BLE-only, which requires Bluetooth 4.0 as it is not backwards-compatible. I'd be interested in seeing if a BT 4.0-equiped Mac or PC could work without the extra hardware.

As for the "clip" part of the device, my Ultra came with a little black belt-clip. Maybe that was a new addition for when I got mine? I only use the Fitbit directly for things like the sleep arm band so as not to stress the device as I can see it breaking easily under stress.

As for the "clip" part of the device, my Ultra came with a little black belt-clip. Maybe that was a new addition for when I got mine? I only use the Fitbit directly for things like the sleep arm band so as not to stress the device as I can see it breaking easily under stress.

Mine came with a clip as well, but the criticism of it has been that the Fitbit Ultra would slip/fall out of it. I've always just attached it to the coin pocket in may pants/shorts/etc, and have had it accidentally get dislodged several times (almost lost the Ultra once when it fell out on a walk home at night). Hopefully the rubber will limit this 'slipping' factor.

I'm curious about the physical design of the One though: how easy is it to actually see the screen in daylight (it's pretty hit and miss with the Ultra)? Also, what's the battery life like? How long does it take to charge up from empty?

I temporarily got one of the old fitbits for a work challenge, and the number one complaint I have is with the website. It's just awful - super slow, Flash graphs everywhere, and the numbers are nonsense. Since we're a software engineering firm, someone wrote an internal tool to track the different team's progress using the API, and the numbers coming out of that are way off from what's on the website.

I've been using a Fitbit One for about a week now, and I'll say that the rubberized clip is pretty good at preventing accidental loss of the little device. It can even be difficult sometimes to put the clip over thicker fabric (like denim) without feeling like you're bending the metal clip out of shape.

I've been syncing with iOS 6.0.1 and haven't experienced any Fitbit app crashes, so there may be some variability in performance there.

And lastly, the whole "using 2 USB port" thing isn't that big of a deal. I just recharged my Fitbit One for the first time last night after a week of continuous use (and a lot of syncing). It only takes a couple hours and I just plugged it into my iPhone charger, so it's not like you need to keep the charging dongle plugged in full time.

I temporarily got one of the old fitbits for a work challenge, and the number one complaint I have is with the website. It's just awful - super slow, Flash graphs everywhere, and the numbers are nonsense. Since we're a software engineering firm, someone wrote an internal tool to track the different team's progress using the API, and the numbers coming out of that are way off from what's on the website.

I just picked one up. Very nice design/hardware. As others have noted, they've obviously included the BT dongle because most people won't have a computer with BT4.0 on it. Their software searches specifically for their dongle, unfortunately - at least on a MacBook Pro Retina, which definitely has BT4.0 built-in. Hopefully they'll remove that requirement in a future update.

fivecolors wrote:

I have zero problems with bluetooth syncing on a mid 2010 iMac running Mountain Lion.

Are you trying to say you're using your Mac's built-in BT to sync with the Fitbit One? I doubt the 2010 iMac even had BT4.0, so that seems unlikely. Details?

My wife just bought us Fitbit Ones the other day. We both sync using iPhone 4S. I haven't even bothered syncing with a computer yet, don't think I will much, if at all. I also have not experienced any crashes with the iOS Fitbit app for whatever it's worth. I'm liking it so far, no complaints.

Like the poster above, Android support is an absolute must. Whatever this thing costs, the price of an iPod on top of it (no iPhone on any carrier will get signal where I live, that would be absolutely pointless) makes it simply not worth it.

And you know what? A peripheral should not be dictating smartphone OS choices to start with. It's a niche product. It is not a killer app. If your niche product requires some tech I don't own and won't work with the tech I do own, I will consider that product a failure as well, and feel justified in doing so. Tech works for us. If you have to bend over backwards to use tech, you're doing it wrong... or using Apple "one size fits iAll" products (but I repeat myself).

Anyway, if you can sync it with a computer, you can probably get your data into your smartphone via My Fitness Pal, a calorie/exercise tracking web app that supports all mobile platforms via app or your mobile browser. So even if the phone hardware doesn't support it, just sync with MFP on the computer and do it that way. That works. Although I would prefer, owning none of these devices and possibly being in the market to buy one, to buy one that works with the tech I have.

Jacqui mentioned time drift being a problem: I just noticed that my Fitbit One jumped 6 hours forward after leaving it alone for a couple of hours. Definitely seems like a firmware bug of some sort (I don't think it has anything to do with syncing.)

Jacqui mentioned time drift being a problem: I just noticed that my Fitbit One jumped 6 hours forward after leaving it alone for a couple of hours. Definitely seems like a firmware bug of some sort (I don't think it has anything to do with syncing.)

no rtc and using a micro with internal oscillator thats temp sensitive ?

Could someone with one test the dongle on linux to see if there are drivers for it ?Been looking for a bluetooth 4 dongle that works with linux for ages.

Definitely seems like Jacqui doesn't really get what Bluetooth 4.0 really means. Hopefully she does now.

I think Fitbit was a little ahead of its time updating their device with Bluetooth 4.0 with so few devices supporting it. If anything, I wonder if it is using some early version of B4.0 that isn't strictly compatible with the actual B4.0 standard, requiring the use of their own B4.0 adapter on machines that follow the actual standard.

Definitely seems like Jacqui doesn't really get what Bluetooth 4.0 really means. Hopefully she does now.

I think Fitbit was a little ahead of its time updating their device with Bluetooth 4.0 with so few devices supporting it. If anything, I wonder if it is using some early version of B4.0 that isn't strictly compatible with the actual B4.0 standard, requiring the use of their own B4.0 adapter on machines that follow the actual standard.

OMG stop being a neckbeard. Of course she gets everything, you can't criticise poorly presented and written articles.

I've had my Fitbit Ultra for close to 6 months now and I am very happy with the results (30lbs lost so far)

That being said I am truly pissed off at Fitbit for their lack of updates to their website, software and iOS App. For starters their paid upgrade to get a 'Personal Trainer' to help with knowing when to step it up and walk more was such a great idea that I jumped on it after a month. However after two weeks of using it I realized the calculations it was doing in the background were right out to lunch and totally inaccurate. I emailed Fitbit and was informed that it was in fact broken and that they would refund my money. I asked if they were going to fix it any time soon and I was given the usual PR walk around without any indication they were even working on it.

The second issue I have is that the iOS App is completely useless for me since it doesn't even sync with the website properly. Even after a clean install on a new iPhone after a day or so it just stops syncing properly with Fitbit.com

And finally, the lack of working with other apps for food tracking is half hearted. Like many Fitbit owners I use MyFitnessPal (in Canada) to track my food intake. However there is now detailed syncing of these two together. It's pretty much a total given one way and a total given another way but only for half the info.

Even after all these issues, I still love my Fitbit for how it has helped me. But I am desperately hoping they hire some new programmers or software designers. Until then, I'm looking forward to seeing what the MIT guys can deliver with their new project.